thing she never did again: she never spoke German any more, but gave all
her orders and held all dealings with the enemy in Swahili, the native
language, or in English. In this she was adamant.

Now, indeed, had the great work of her life begun; for into those four
months she crammed the devotion of a lifetime. Always full to
overcrowding, never less than 600 patients where we had only the
equipment for 200, the whole hospital looked to her for the nursing that
is so essential in modern medicine and surgery. For nurses are now an
absolute necessity for medical and surgical work of modern times, and we
could get no other sisters. The railway was broken, the bridges down,
and where could we look for help or hospital comforts or medical
necessities? We had pushed on faster than our supplies, and with the
equipment of a Casualty Clearing Station we had to do the work of a
Stationary Hospital. No beds save those we took over from the German
Hospital, no sheets nor linen. Can one wonder that she was everywhere
and anywhere at all homes and in all places? Six o'clock in the morning
found her in the wards; she alone of all of us could find no time to
rest in the afternoon; a step upon the verandah where she slept beside
the bad pneumonias and black-water fever cases found her always up and
ready to help. Nor was her job finished in the nursing; she was our
housekeeper too. For she alone could run the German woman cook, could
speak Swahili, and keep order among the native boys, buy eggs and fruit
and chickens from the natives, so that our sick might not want for the
essentially fresh foods. Then at last the railway opened up a big
Stationary Hospital, our Casualty Clearing Station moved further to the
bush, and Sister Mabel's work was done. But there was no elegant leisure
for her when she arrived at the Coast to take the leave she long had
earned in England. An Australian transport had some cases of
cerebro-spinal meningitis aboard, and wanted Sisters, and, as if she had